


Standing on the Edge

by under_a_grey_cloud



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Suicidal Dean, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, suicide attempt accidental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 16:51:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12040149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/under_a_grey_cloud/pseuds/under_a_grey_cloud
Summary: This is a story about Dean Winchester's suicidal thoughts and suicide attempt.No one commits suicide in this story.No one dies in this story.Sam saves Dean's life in this story.This is a story about family and love.





	Standing on the Edge

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: THIS STORY INCLUDES SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AND A SUICIDE ATTEMPT.
> 
> PLEASE DON'T READ IT IF IT WILL TRIGGER YOU.

 

 

Dean is hanging around the bunker, bored, looking at Busty Asian Beauties as he and Sam watch _True Blood_ for the umpteenth time. The first five or six times it was fun to point out the many mistakes, how the television show differed wildly from reality. Then they started to get bored, though it was a tried and true way to block out reality. Then Sam began to browse his laptop, Dean looked at porn, and the show provided background noise.

Dean is watching _True Blood_ alone. Sam is in the kitchen with his laptop, searching desperately for a case. They are both bored beyond recognition. Every so often Sam shouts “There’s a town where whole trees keep falling down by themselves. Oh, never mind. It’s a story about tornadoes.” Dean considers Sam additional background noise.

“Hey, I found a story about an entire school of children being turned into vampires. Oh, wait, they’re just dressed up as vampires. Part of a school fund drive. The picture is pretty cute, though.”

Dean laughs. He doesn’t care if Sam can hear him. Sam hears him.

Dean considers turning off the TV and taking Busty Asian Beauties into his bedroom. It, too, is tried and true, though he has to admit to himself it’s getting pretty old. He looks through the stack of porn magazines the Men of Letters had considerately left . They’re all getting pretty old. Even Dean’s penis is bored.

“What do you say we go to the diner for lunch?” Sam shouts. “I still can’t believe they have kale sandwiches.”

“They have kale sandwiches,” Dean shouts back. “How about that new bar? Maybe I could find some action. These porn rags just aren’t doing it.”

Sam leans his chair back in an attempt to stretch his legs. He’s getting stiff from being in the same position for so long. The chair, which matches none of the equally old, frayed and unmatched kitchen chairs, tips back comfortably. Then Sam’s absurdly long legs become uncomfortable and he tips back the chair some more. His back hurts. He tries one more time, and tips the chair back so far it falls to the floor. Sam is stunned, lying on his back on the floor with his knees sticking up, bent over the edge of the seat.

“What, you trying for a gold medal? That’s got to be the tenth time you’ve fallen over and broken a chair.”

Silence.

Dean begins to worry. “Hey Sam, you ok?”

More silence.

“Sam?”

Dean is officially worried. He leaves Busty Asian Beauties on the couch, vaguely hearing _True Blood_ as he walks slightly more quickly than usual to the kitchen. Halfway there he starts to run.

“Sam?!”

Dean enters the kitchen and sees Sam laying on his back on the floor, knees sticking up, sitting on what’s left of the chair. He’s essentially sitting horizontally, surrounded by little bits of splintery wood and pieces of chair. He’s staring blankly at the ceiling. His legs are splayed in an odd angle, although that could be because his legs are always splayed in an odd angle when he’s prone. They’re too long to assume normal angles. Or it could be because he’s lying on the floor sitting in a toppled over broken chair.

“No! SAM!” Dean shouts as he runs to his brother to check his pulse.

It’s all over when Dean touches his brother’s wrist. Sam starts to laugh, which, because he’s lying on his back, turns into a spurt of spit that lands on Dean’s chin. Dean wipes it off, stares at Sam, and shakes his head.

Sam gets up and begins collecting the wreckage of the chair. Dean crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against a wall, watching.

“Ouch! I got a splinter. Would you mind getting the tweezers, or is that asking too much?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what? Yes you’ll get the tweezers, or yes that’s asking too much?”

“Yep.”

Sam picks at the splinter, causing his hand to bleed.

“Hey, I’m bleeding over here. A little help?”

Dean huffs and takes his Swiss army knife from his pocket. He expertly flicks out the tweezers and goes to work on Sam’s hand.

“Ouch! I meant give me the tweezers, and I’ll get it out myself.”

“Aw, is wittle Sammy gonna cwy cause he got a ‘plinter?” Dean said, pulling the splinter out with his tweezers. He shows the piece of wood to Sam. “See? All better.”

Sam glares at Dean.

“Your bedside manner leaves something to be desired.”

“Yeah? Well I ain’t no doctor and you’re not lying in a hospital bed. You’re sitting on the floor surrounded by splinters. Get up and stand in the corner.”

“I don’t frigging believe this. You’re giving me a time out?!”

“For crying out loud. I’m gonna clean up the splinters and I can’t do that with you sitting on top of them. Move.”

Sam turns his head, hoping Dean can’t see him blushing. Dean learned how to clean up all kinds of messes when he and Sam were kids and their father was out hunting. He bypasses the broom and lugs the vacuum cleaner out of a closet. The splinters are small enough that the vacuum gets them all, no trouble. Dean begins to vacuum the rest of the kitchen floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Having hot sex with a busty Asian lady. Splinters scatter, and now I’ve got the vacuum out, I might as well do the whole floor.”

Dean finishes vacuuming, empties the bag into the trash and puts the vacuum cleaner away.

“You’re gonna get rid of that chair. Outside. With the rest of the garbage. Now.”

Sam humbly trudges up the stairs with the chair, which bangs on every step. He goes outside, puts the chair with the garbage, and glares at what’s left of the chair as if it had attacked him. As he’d expected, the new pain in his hand is from another splinter. Fortunately this one is pretty large and not lodged very deeply. Sam manages to pull it out himself, and tosses it toward the chair.

Dean appears at the head of the stairs, holding two cups of coffee. He hands one to Sam.

“Peace?” he asks, taking a sip of his coffee.

“Detente” Sam replies. He’s still angry at Dean for having been such an ass.

“Day what, now?”

Sam sighs. “Peace. I’m still hurting from falling onto the floor. I need to move. Wanna take a walk to the waterfall? It’s not very far, and we can sit on the cliff and let the sound of the waterfall clear our heads.”

“Okay, nature boy.”

The season is summer on the edge of autumn. It might have been a little hot walking up the hill to the cliff, but a cool autumn breeze keeps them comfortable. They walk in silence for a while, a layer of early fallen leaves crunching under their feet. Then Dean says “It _was_ pretty funny, seeing you sitting in a chair on your back on the floor.”

“Well, I’m glad you found it entertaining,” Sam says in a stern voice, then gives up and starts laughing. “Okay. I admit. I must have looked like an idiot.”

Dean snorts.

“Yeah, an idiot crying about a splinter.”

“I wasn’t crying. I was whining.” Sam realizes he’s just made a fool of himself.

“You said it.” Dean laughs harder and ends up snorting onto his shirt. Soon they’re both laughing and snorting their way to the cliff.

They hear the waterfall before they see it. Dean stops laughing and becomes very quiet.

“It’s a beautiful sound, isn’t it?” asks Sam.

Silence.

“Dean, the waterfall sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? And the leaves are beginning to turn. Pretty amazing, so much nature, ten minutes from the bunker.”

Silence.

“Dean, are you even listening to me?”

“What? Oh. Yeah. It’s like the National Geographic out here.”

They come to the edge of the cliff and sit down on a wooden bench the Men of Letters must have built. They sit in companionable silence. At least Sam sits in what he thinks is companionable silence. Dean gets up and walks to the edge of the cliff. He sighs. He can’t count how many times he’s come here alone and chickened out, when either Cas or Sam went missing. Or were temporarily dead. Or possessed. Dean thinks if he jumps off the cliff and dies, it’s not very likely some angel will fly by and bring him back to life, healing the broken bones and the smashed head. Cas is off on some Heaven business, and besides, his grace is gone and his wings don’t work anyhow.

Just thinking about breaking his bones and smashing his head makes Dean frown. He kicks a pebble over the edge of the cliff.

“Dean, be careful,” shouts Sam. Dean ignores him. He’s wondering what it would feel like to jump. To smash his bones and skull into splinters, splinters that no one would vacuum up. The waterfall would take care of the splinters, but someone would have to remove his corpse and bury it. Probably Sam. Sammy would give him a hunter’s funeral. That would suck for Sam. Maybe destroy him. Yet still Dean thinks of the hours spent trying to drink away his conscience or escape with an airhead girl with big boobs. All that shit finally would be over. No more hating himself for being such an asshole. No more guilt over the innocent people they occasionally took down on a particularly tricky case. Friendly fire, his Dad had called it.

Sam lies down on the bench and looks at the sky.

“Hey, a sparrow!”

“How amazing,” Dean answers in a monotone.

“Look. It has a white mustache. Maybe it’s a northern sparrow. But they live in tropical Africa. Don’t see how one could fly to Kansas.”

“Since when did you become an expert on birds?”

“That crazy time those weird, pterodactyl-like creatures were decimating a town? I got interested, started reading about birds. You know how many varieties of sparrow there are?”

Silence.

“Are you okay, Dean?”

Silence.

Sam gets up off the bench and walks over to his brother.

“What is it, Dean? I was only kidding around before. What’s wrong?”

“Everything.”

Dean moves one foot slightly further over the edge of the cliff.

“Dean! You idiot. Come back here. You could fall off.”

“I’m aware.”

Sam puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder and tugs, trying to pull him away from the overhang. Dean tries to push Sam away, and trips over a small stone. He loses his balance and begins to topple over the cliff.

“SAMMY! HELP!”

Sam uses his weight to keep his feet on the ground, and grabs Dean by the chest. Dean topples over backwards onto Sam. Sam pulls Dean closer and doesn’t let go. Dean can feel him heaving and sobbing. He can feel Sam’s hot tears as he buries his head in Dean’s shoulder. They stay like that, Sam starting to feel the circulation cut off in his legs. Dean’s beginning to have a little trouble breathing because Sam is holding him so tightly. Neither brother minds.

After a while Dean gently pushes Sam’s arms open and squats down next to him. He picks up a twig and draws meaningless patterns in the dirt. He looks down at the ground as he draws, avoiding his brother, but still close enough to touch. The air cools down as the sun begins its inexorable lowering toward the horizon.

Neither of the brothers want to leave, but neither of them want to be cold or to walk home in the dark. Dean stands up first, then Sam, who takes a moment to stretch.

“Dean?” Sam asks quietly, seriously.

“Don’t.”

“Did you intentionally—“

“Don’t!”

They face each other, looking into each other’s red-rimmed eyes.

“Please don’t do that again, Dean. I don’t know what I’d do if you’d, if you’d---“

“I didn’t. You stopped me. You saved my frigging life, Sammy. Funny. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to live till I was falling over the cliff and you literally got my back. I realized I’d never have your back again if...” his voice trails off. This time the brothers really do stand in companionable silence.

“You hungry?” Dean eventually asks. “I could really go for a burger and beer.” Or whiskey, he thought.

“I’ll come to the bar with you if you’ll come to the diner with me first. They _do_ have food other than kale, you know.”

“I’m starving. I’ll order a burger with everything except kale.”

“And leeks. Make sure you don’t get a burger with leeks.”

“Cheeseburger, double cheese, everything on it, hold the kale and leeks.”

“I’m getting cold up here. Wanna head back?”

“Yeah. And Sammy,” Dean pauses.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks, Sammy. I owe you. Big time.”

“No,” Sammy answers. “You’re here, aren’t you? You could have jumped anytime. I owe you.”

“Okay. We owe each other. We got each other’s backs.”

“Always,” says Sam, punching his brother on the shoulder.

“Enough with the chick flick moment. Let’s go get some food.”

They walk back to the bunker, cold and peaceful. As they enter the kitchen to get the keys to the Impala, Sam says “Hey Dean. While I was out there dumping the chair, I got another splinter. Got it out all by myself.” He grins like an idiot.

“Good for you, Sammy. You’re getting to be such a big boy,” Dean says in a high fake mothering voice. “But seriously,” he says in his normal voice.

“Seriously,” Sam replies. They get the car keys and put on their jackets, then head toward the Impala.

“Still no kale or leeks. Ever.”

“Even if you were dying of starvation and all you had to eat was kale and leeks?”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

Dean tosses Sam the keys to the Impala.


End file.
